"The Hospital" Medical Book Supplement, No. 1

Doyle are household words in this connection. Darwin's " Loves of the Plants " and Blackmore's works do not come into the same categorv; Arbuthnot's works have exercised a slighter influence on succeeding generations than the verdict of his contemporaries would have led us to expect. Physicians for many years were the recognised teachers of the medical profession, and the lectureships to which they were appointed formed an im-

English medicine has always been fortunate in possessing a few men of the highest mental ?qualities and of unblemished reputation. These men, educated in the earlier times at the courts of kings or in the houses of the great nobility, in later times at the universities, have been men of affairs as much as physicians, and their sound commonsense has helped them in the cure of disease more than the humoral theories to which they successively subscribed. English medical literature therefore is very varied in character. There is a mass of teaching, veiled for the most part in the decent obscurity of a learned language, which enshrines a mystic medicine based on astrology and distorted Galenic teaching, whose accessories, or rather actual working tools, were urinoscopy and horoscopes. There are books written in English, and afterwards translated into Latin to give them a wider circulation, and many of these books are immortal.
Harvey's " Exercitatio," Sydenham's " Observations Medics," and Sir Thomas Browne's " Keligio Medici " are examples. Others, again, written in English, have remained fo us as models of what medical treatises ought to be. The best of these opera aurea are Latham's " Lectures on Subjects ?connected with Clinical Medicine," Sir Thomas Watson's "Lectures on Physic," and Bright's "Reports of Medical Cases." There exists a -fourth class, which is almost peculiar to English medicine?a class which contains some of the greatest literary triumphs of English physicians? books which are so entirely independent of medicine that it seems to be merely an accident that the author was a physician, and yet books which would probably never have been conceived but for the medical training of the author. Locke's "Essay on the Human Understanding"; Garth's poem, "The Dispensary," with all that it meant to Alexander Pope, . and the poetry of Akenside and of Armstrong, will occur to everyone. Tobias Smollett and Sir A. C.
Doyle are household words in this connection.
Darwin's " Loves of the Plants " and Blackmore's works do not come into the same categorv; Arbuthnot's works have exercised a slighter influence on succeeding generations than the verdict of his contemporaries would have led us to expect. Physicians for many years were the recognised teachers of the medical profession, and the lectureships to which they were appointed formed an important phrt of the income of many young men who afterwards became famous. Dr. Banester and Dr.
Alexander Read were the best known of these teachers in London during the later part of Elizabeth's reign. Dr. Banester taught anatomy and surgery at the Barber Surgeons' Hall, and soon attained a great reputation. There exists a spirited picture, dated 1588, which shows him in the act of lecturing upon anatomy to an audience of Barber Surgeons. His lectures were afterwards collected and published in a volume which teaches us exactly the scope of contemporary knowledge. Dr. Alexander Bead was the next great teacher of anatomy in London, and, like Banester, he lectured on surgery also.
His lectures were published, and give us a very poor opinion of their matter, however able the exposition may have been. This monopoly of teaching by the younger physicians bore good fruit, for they acquired a familiarity with the details of dissection, and with the principles of physiology, which culminated after a few generations in the volumes of Harvey, Willis, Wren, Glisson, and Clopton Havers; whilst the work of Mayow was so far in advance of his time ?hat it is only now beginning to receive adequate recognition.
Anatomical knowledge sometimes took curious byways, the best instance of which is Dr. John Smith's paraphrase upon the six verses of the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, beginning " Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." In a book of 266 pages, published in 1666, Dr. Smith labours to prove, and apparently satisfies himself, that King Solomon was an exact anatomist, and that these six verses contain an epitome of his knowledge.
For Dr. Smith " the silver cord " is the spinal cord, and " the golden bowl " the pia mater; whilst he states roundly that this part of the allegory could never be understood before the time of Harvey, for " the pitcher " represents the veins. " The fountain " is the right ventricle of the heart, " the wheel " is the instrument of circulation, and " the cistern " is the left ventricle! The statements of this commentator are interesting, as they show the shifts to which previous exponents had been put when there was as yet no doctrine of the circulation. Thus Peter Lowe, who was a mere surgeon, had ventured to state in 16"! 2 : " The Pitcher broken at the fonntaine: that is the great Vena Cava that may no move shoot blood from the liver, which is the spring that humecteth " (moisteneth) " the whole body in such sort that it serveth no more than a broken TEE HOSPITAL. November 16, 1907. vessel. The wheel broken at the Cistern, that is the nerves and bladder doth grow so weak that they can no more retain water." The work of the younger physicians in anatomy and physiology was unequal. They were still trammelled by. authority, and their writings are a perfect labyrinth of theories, from which it is hard to disentangle facts. Sir Theodore de May erne is to some extent an exception. He published a series of cases which came under his notice between the years 1605 and 1640. The descriptions are excellent, the reflections minute and judicious, and the diagnosis and prognosis first rate. But to each case is appended a commentary in the shape of theories, and the vast farrago of medicines given or recommended leaves the reader in a state of mental confusion. Indeed, the general impression left after perusing his work is that a brilliant clinical physician and a man of great common-sense was lost owing to the theories of disease in which he had become involved. But for all this the cases form a most interesting series, and the illnesses of many persons who have since become historical detailed.
The histories and methods of Sir Theodore (1573-1654) may well be compared with those of Sydenham, who lived a few years later (1624-1688). Mayerne gave abundance of drugs in every case; Sydenham would sometimes give no medicine at all, though usually he was not sparing: Mayerne was a courtier and man of the world, who often protected himself by routine and precedent; Sydenham's only rule seems to have been that " What is useful is good." It was said of him seriously by Blackmore, scoffingly by Gideon Harvey, that he made it his principle to go contrary to the practice of other physicians. Yet much may still be learnt from the writings both of Sir Theodore de Mayerne and of Thomas Sydenham by those who have the time and opportunity to read them. Medicine is more fortunate than surgery in that Dr. Ereind has written a learned but very excellent'' History of Physic," published in two volumes in the reign of George I. The history takes the form of a discourse written to Dr. Mead whilst the author lay, a political prisoner, in the Tower of London. Freind owed his release to Mead, who is said to have refused to prescribe for Sir Kobert Walpole until the latter signed an order for his release. The History is well worthy of a more careful study than it has received latterly, for it reviews in a clear and easy manner the practice of physic from the time of Galen to the beginning of the sixteenth century. The eighteenth century produced nothing very noteworthy in the way of medical literature in England, but the nineteenth century was prolific in good work. The new science of pathology first gave an impetus to the study of scientific medicine in the earlier years of the century, and Dr. Baillie came into notice first as an able teacher, then as a morbid anatomist, and lastly as a great physician. Morbid anatomy had hardly begun to exercise its full effect in converting medicine from an empirical into a scientific profession when Laennec, by his introduction of the stethoscope, gave a new generation of young physicians opportunities which they were not slow to turn to advantage, and enabled them to add greatly to medical literature in its best form. Medicine presented an attractive field, and for some years the best minds in the profession were attracted to physic rather than to surgery. The polish of the Harveian orations and the writings of Sir Henry Halford and of Sir Thomas Watson formed noble examples of English prose, which were long copied by those who aspired to maintain the prestige cf English medical literature.

SURGICAL LITERATURE IN ENGLAND.
The literature of English surgery may be said to have sprung all armed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
Surgeons wrote but little before the Beformation, and, if we except the writings of John of Ardern in the fourteenth century, what they wrote was to very little purpose. Between 1560 and 1590 a number of books on surgery appeared for the first time written in English, books which were not only excellent in substance, but first-rate in style. The chief writers were Thomas Gale, William Clowes, and John Banester in London; John Halle at Maidstone; John Bead at Gloucester; and Beter Lowe at Glasgow. All these writers knew something of each other, for all had served abroad in the military expeditions in France'and Spain, and they were thus comrades in arms. They were united in a common desire to raise surgery from the degraded position which it then held, and from a trade to make it a profession. This desire led them to very fine flights of eloquence, and we owe to it many graphic details about the state of surgery during the Tudor period.
The dominant note which runs through the writings of these great surgeons is the wish to inculcate a very high standard of work and of morality in everyone who practised surgery, a standard which there is very little doubt they exemplified in their own lives. Gale expresses the sentiment in the following passage, which appears in an address to the younger surgeons :?" I pray you remember that ye be very studious in this art and diligent and neat in the practising thereof; and also to be modest, wise and of good manners and behaviour and that you lack none of those good properties that we have spoken of before, lest when you shall be called for in the time of necessity to serve princes and other noble persons, ye do not only dishonour yourselves and your country but this worthy art also.
Remember, I pray you, what great charge is committed unto you in the time of wars. Ye have not only charge of men's limbs, but also of their lives, which if they should perish through your default, either in neglecting of anything that were necessary for their health which you ought to be furnished withal, either else through lack of knowledge which ye ought to have in your art?I say if these defaults be in you and the people perish in your hands you cannot excuse yourselves of your brother's death." These Elizabethan sentiments were not peculiar to Gale and his companions, for they were re-echoed in the next generation by John Woodall, the principal surgeon to the newly-established East India Company, who wrote a book called " The Surgeon's Mate," as a guide to young surgeons who were going to the East. " The Surgeon's Mate " is full of details of cases interspersed with "much sound advice. It shows Woodall not only as a surgeon of experience and resource, but as a deeply religious man, thankful to God for the cures which his skill enabled him to make, and breathing the same spirit that enabled Ambroise Par6 to write, " I dressed him; God cured him." Here is such an extract : " And as for my brethren of the younger sort, let me lovingly advise you neither for vain ostentation sake, nor popular applause, by rashness, to be guilty of the effusion of blood by unadvised amputation, though you may pretend you have Art for a sufficient warrant, or for a buckler; lest God touch your hearts for it in secret, who seeth not as men see, for the artificial shedding of blood hath no warrant nor encouragement written in God's book; wherefore in matters of weight be not too rash, but be advised by counsell." Woodall had travelled widely in Germany, Poland, and France. He had extensive experience in treating the plague, and he was attracted to London by the tremendous outbreak in 1603. It is no wonder, therefore, that iiis experience in plague, pestilence, and famine -strengthened his reliance on Divine Providence, and made him write soberly and honestly, setting down what he knew in the plainest language for the benefit of others.
Woodall's book, published in 1639, marks the end of the first period of English surgical literature, a period characterised by detail and almost free from the modern spirit of inquiry or generalisation. The Elizabethan surgeons were contented to recount individual cases, to relate the effects of dressings discovered by themselves or handed down to them by their masters, and to advertise their practice in this, that, or the other branch of surgery, often with an "unblushing effrontery which makes the reader smile to think how slight is the difference between writers of the sixteenth and of the twentieth centuries. The writings of these older surgeons record accurately and often graphically the cases they saw, but as yet they were not sufficiently educated to generalise upon their facts.
The second period of surgical literature is opened by Richard Wiseman, Serjeant-Surgeon to King Charles II., whose " Chirurgical Treatises " were published in 1680. Wiseman, like all the surgeons of his time, had seen much military service during the Civil War at home, and afterwards against the Dutch. He reflects faithfully a new epoch when the Ptoyal Society had its beginning, when Sydenham was advancing physic, and the Oxford school was doing as much for anatomy. Wiseman was able to generalise; he narrates his cases with no less care than did the Elizabethan surgeons, but he compares one with another, and is able to deduce conclusions, which are sometimes wrong, but are often far-reaching and correct. By these means he brings surgery 'a step nearer to our present conception of a science to be studied, as well as an art to be practised. Like his predecessors, Wiseman is a man of sterling honesty, for he says : " When the young chirurgeon shall find the cure easy in theory and appear so at first in the practice t-oo, yet suddenly deceive him with a relapse, and not only once, but often delude his best endeavours; when the bystanders and persons concerned shall begin to accuse him of knavery in his proceedings and think him to pull back a cure, whilst he is rolling Sisyphus his stone, which will tumble down whether he will or not; he will then wish that all other practitioners had done what I have done in this treatise viz. recommend their observations both . successful and unsuccessful, thereby increasing knowledge in our profession and leaving sea-marks for the discovery of such rocks as they themselves have split upon." Wiseman's method was followed and improved by many succeeding writers on surgery, until it reached its culminating point in the writings of Percivall Pott. Like Wiseman, Pott was of necessity a practical rather than a scientific surgeon, for pathology as yet had no existence. The descriptions of his cases are so clear, and the facts are so well stated, that it is generally possible to recognise their nature and to draw conclusions from them by the light of modern knowledge; whilst the cases narrated by many of his contemporaries and successors are incomprehensible from the manner in which theories are mingled with facts. Pott had the saving grace to know that surgery had not reached finality on the one hand, and that many of his predecessors were men of knowledge and.honesty oil the other.
He says in his treatise on Fractures: " I am very willing to allow that many parts of surgery are still capable of considerable improvement; and this part perhaps as much, if not more than any, it being one of those in which the observance of and rigid adherence to old prescribed rules have prevented the majority of practitioners from venturing to think for themselves and have induced them to go on in a beaten track from which they might not only safely but advantageously devia'te." Pott wrote easily and well, but after his death there came a long period, fruitful indeed in good work but devoid of literature in the best sense of the word. The School founded by John Hunter too often followed their master in a slovenliness of expression which concealed a remarkable originality of thought, and compared most unfavourably with the older writers.
Sir Astley Cooper and Sir William Lawrence were brilliant exceptions. Both were men of high cultivation, able and willing to clothe their thoughts in clear and appropriate language. Sir James Paget followed these writers a few years later, and brought back the style of surgical writers to a very high level. For this style, as well as for their substance, his writings are worthy to be read and to be read again. So much is written at the present day that some authors are content not only to dictate their thoughts to an amanuensis but even to allow another hand to revise what has been sent to the press. It is impossible, under such conditions, to write any-, thing that will be worthy of preservation on account of the manner in which it is written, and few surgical writers can hope to have their writings preserved for the matter they contain, because surgery is progressive and constantly changing. It appears, therefore, that the tendency of modern surgical literature.is once more in the direction of bad style, which is rather the result of carelessness than of imperfect knowledge. SOME WORTHY ADDITIONS TO THE PRACTITIONER'S LIBRARY. It would be manifestly impossible to pass in review all the various works in the different departments of medical science which have appeared, either as totally new works or as revised, corrected, and enlarged editions of older publications, during the past year. Nor do we believe that such a detailed enumeration of the additions to medical literature will have any real or lasting value to the practitioner. It is our intention to devote more attention to books which are worthy of inclusion in the practitioner's library, and with that limitation in view we have thought it advisable, at least in this our first book supplement, to confine ourselves strictly to works issued during the year by British publishing firms, and to pass by the many excellent volumes which have emanated from American and Continental houses. This limitation also necessitated a process of weeding out and selection from even the lists of British publishers. Highly specialised works, and. again, text-books obviously designed for the use of students preparing for examination, could not be included in our survey without extending the notice much beyond the limits of our space. What we have endeavoured to give, in the short resume that follows of the year's output, is a brief notice of the main features in the way of novelties of interest to the general practitioner in the various publishers' catalogues and lists. During the past twelve months a large number of new books and new editions of old favourites have been issued; so many, indeed, that it would be impossible for us, in the comparatively short space available in our first book supplement, to give an adequate review of each volume. For a fuller and more comprehensive notice of the various medical and surgical works and treatises on special subjects here enumerated our readers are referred to back numbers of The Hospital or to future issues of The Hospital Medical Book Supplement. MEDICINE.
Some New Books and New Editions.
The advent of Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton as medical publishers in association with Mr. Henry Frowde, of the well-known Oxford University Press, has been marked by the publication of several interesting and extremely excellent manuals. The System of Medicine, edited by Professor Osier and Dr. MacCrae, of which two volumes have seen the light, is a useful addition to the practitioner's library, and the Oxford Medical Manuals (among which we may specifically mention as worthy of the general practitioner's consideration, with a view to a permanency on the library shelves, Dr. Sutherland's Treatment of Disease in Children, Dr. Adamson's Skin Affections in Childhood, Dr. Poynton's Heart Disease, Dr. Gee's Medical Lectures and Clinical Aphorisms and Auscultation and Percussion, and Dr. Guthrie's Functional Nervous Disorders in Children) are specially written and eminently suitable for the practitioner, though they will doubtless be greatly appreciated by the senior student as well.
Messrs. J. and A. Churchill, 7 Great Marlborough Street, have issued a large number of new books and new editions during the year, and the volumes emanating from this wellknown firm continue to show the high excellence of printing and general get-up which characterises all Messrs. Churchill's publications. In   Charles Griffin and Company, Exeter Street, Strand, have issued Dr. Samuel West's treatise on Diseases of the Respiratory Organs, in two volumes, a work which is of the greatest interest and will prove of the highest service to the general practitioner. In their list, also, are to be found the following new editions of well-known and popular textbooks : Davies' Handbook of Hygiene, Reid's Sanitary Engineering, Blyth's Foods, Oppenheimer's Toxines and Anti-Toxines and Ferments and their Actions?two handbooks that should be on the library shelves of every practitioner who wishes to have at hand the best information on current theories of treatment.
One of the most interesting volumes published by this firm is Dr. Robert Saundby's Medical Ethics: a Guide to Professional Conduct, the second edition of which has just appeared. It is a small and handy manual of medical etiquette?concise, clear, and practical, and it is one of the books with which the practitioner cannot afford to dispense. Another useful work is the second edition of Professor Pavlov's The Work of the Digestive Glands. The Pocket-book Series, of which new editions have appeared during the year (one of the latest being Dr. Brooks's Tropical Hygiene), are also issued by this firm, whose list in addition includes Dr. Dixon Mann's Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, the fourth edition of which is about to be issued; Yon Jaksch and Garrod's Clinical Diagnosis (5th edition), one of the most valuable practioal Among other medical works which have appeared during the year and which merit the appreciative consideration of the general practitioner may be mentioned the following : Muir and Ritchie's Bacteriology (Young J. Pentland, Edinburgh), the fourth edition of which has just been issued maintaining the high standard of excellence which was shown by the first and later editions. Dr. Luff's Gout: Its Pathology and Treatment (Cassell and Company, London), the revised and enlarged third edition of which has just appeared; Martindale's Extra Pharmacopoeia, the new twelfth edition of which has been published by Mr Mr. Henry Kimpton published lately The Practice of Obstetrics, edited by Dr. Reuben Petersen, a bulky volume of 1,087pages, containing much useful and valuable information?a book which is likely to be of service to the general practitioner. A companion work by Dr. Bovee, entitled A Practice of Gynaecology, was issued earlier in the year, and another volume which the same firm published was Dr. Koplik's The Diseases of Children, a very full and exhaustive review of pediatrics.
Mr. Sidney Appleton issued Dr. Torcheimer's large manual on The Prophylaxis and Treatment of Internal Diseases, a work which was favourably received by the profession, and which will repay perusal by the general practitioner, although its teaching is in some points not quite in a line with that of other text-books. The sixth edition of Professor Osier's well-known text-book of medicine was also issued by this firm. Rebman, Limited, were responsib1" for Dr. Jackson's Tropical Medicine, a useful handbook; Dr. Braddon's Cause and Prevention of Beri-Beri, another valuable addition to the library of the student in tropical diseases; and Dr. Greene's Medical Diagnosis. The fourth edition of the deservedly popular Dictionary of Treatment, by Sir W. Whitla, was published by Mr. Henry Renshaw, 356 Strand. The new edition is one of the fullest and best manuals of treatment on the market, and the practitioner in doubt as to which book on the subject to buy would do well to consider the merits of Whitla very carefully before he makes up his mind. An interesting, suggestive, and instructive little book, the joint work of Mr. Barton and Mr.
Gresswell, was published early in the year by Everett and Company, 42 Essex Street, under the title of Elements of the ?: ; T| Practice of Comparative Medicine. Mr. H. J. Glaisher reissued Dr. George Herschell's well-known works on Indigestion and Constipation, and also published a second edition of the same author's little treatise on The Diagnosis of Gastric Carcinoma, a clearly-written sumlnary of the essentials of the disease, which will be of use to the practitioner. The fifth edition of that excellent condensation of The Diseases of Children, by Dr. Ashby and Mr. -Wright, a book which no general practitioner ought to omit from his library catalogue?was issued by Longmans, Green and Company, the same firm also republishing,; for the fifth time. Dr. Coats' Manned of Pathology, thoroughly revised and brought up to date by Dr. Sutherland. ' Dr. Roberts' Theory and Practice of Medicine has run into a tenth edition, which is issued by Mr. H. K. Lewis, who also publishes a fourth edition of Dr. Buxton's Anaesthetics. Both books are so well known that it would be superfluous to enumerate their good points.
Bale, Sons, and Danielsson have just issued the second edition of Dr. Daniel's Laboratory Studies in Tropical Medicine, a handy, practical manual for the student in tropical diseases. The book is well illustrated, and is fully up to date.
Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons have recently issued the second edition of Dr. Herter's Diagnosis of Organic Nervous Disease. This is a comparatively short manual, but it is likely to prove of great service to the practitioner, as it is one of the clearest and most succinct of text-books on the diagnosis of nervous diseases we possess.
Mention must be made of the new British Pharmaceutical Index, published by the Pharmaceutical Society at 72 Great Russell Street, London, W.C. This is indeed what it claims to be on the title page, " an imperial dispensatory for the use of medical practitioners and pharmacists," and it is a work that should have its place oh the library shelves within handy reach, for its usefulness as a reference manual is unquestionable.
Messrs. Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., republished Professor Starling's liccent Advances in the Physiology of Digestion, a small work which, although of special value to the student preparing for higher examinations, will be of use to the practitioner as well. This firm ako issued Messrs. Battle and Corner's Surgery of the Appendix Vermiformis, a valuable addition to the literature of appendicitis; Morat's Physiology of the Nervous System, translated by Dr. Syers; Messrs. Dudgeon and Sargent's The Bacteriology of Peritonitis, a work from which the practising surgeon will derive much useful information.
SURGERY AND SPECIAL SUBJECTS.
Among the new works published in this country on surgery there are few of outstanding merit. There have been several very excellent new editions of old favourites which cannot be passed by without a word or two of appreciative comment, but of the new works themselves it cannot be said that they have fully justified their appearance.
There are so many good editions of standard surgical text-books that a new manual of general surgery" suffers inevitably from comparison and contrast with old and established friends whose claims have become to be tacitly admitted by most students and practitioners.
Starting with the new books, the latest in the field is A Manual of Surgery, by Francis T. Stewart, M.D., Pro-fessor of Surgery at the Philadelphia Clinic, a large crown octavo book of 778 pages, published by Rebman, Limited, 129 Shaftesbury Avenue, London. Dr. Stewart's reputation, as a bold and fearless surgeon will win for him a large number of readers, and though we do not believe thathis